Andy Kessler is a former hedge fund manager turned author who now writes on technology and markets.
His first book Wall Street Meat: Jack Grubman, Frank Quattrone, Mary Meeker, Henry Blodget and me was published in March of 2003, followed by Running Money: Hedge Fund Honchos, Monster Markets and My Hunt for the Big Score , published by HarperCollins in September of 2004. Running Money was added to the New York Times Business Bestseller list on November 7, 2004. Then came How We Got Here which you can find as a free PDF here.
July of 2006 saw the release of The End of Medicine , about Silicon Valley invading medicine and doing to doctors what ATMs did to tellers.
Andy is a frequent contributor to the Wall Street Journal op-ed page and has also written for The New York Times op-ed page, Wired, Forbes Magazine, The Weekly Standard, LA Times, The American Spectator magazine and techcentralstation.com and thestreet.com websites. He has even written a piece of fiction for Slate - bet you can’t find it.
Andy Kessler was co-founder and President of Velocity Capital Management, an investment firm based in Palo Alto, California, that provided funding for private and public technology and communications companies. Private investments included Real Networks, Inktomi, Alteon WebSystems, Centillium and Silicon Image.
In the early ‘80’s, Andy spent 5 years at AT&T Bell Labs as a chip designer, programmer, and spender of millions in regulated last minute, use it or lose it budget funds. In 1985, he joined PaineWebber in New York, where he did research on the electronics and semiconductor industry and was an “All Star†analyst in the Institutional Investor poll.
In 1989, Andy joined Morgan Stanley as their semiconductor analyst, and following in the footsteps of Ben Rosen, he added the role of technology strategist and helped identify long-term, secular trends in technology. In 1993, he moved to San Francisco to join Unterberg Harris, where he ran a private interactive media venture fund, with investments that included N2K, Exodus and Tut Systems.
Andy received a BS in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University in 1980 and an MSEE from the University of Illinois in 1981. K-12 was at Bridgewater-Raritan High School East in New Jersey. Every morning for 13 years, while heading out for the school bus, Andy looked to his left, up the hill, and checked out the flag flying at Middlebook Encampment, where George Washington and his troops spent winters watching the British troops in New Brunswick. On June 14, 1777, the Continental Congress approved the Betsy Ross 13 star flag as the official flag, and it flew for the first time at the Middlebrook Encampment. Pretty cool.
He lives with his wife and four sons in the Bay Area and enjoys basketball, hiking, skiing, biking, Pininfarina designed moving objects and reminiscing about raising Siberian Huskies.
